Effects of digital multimodal composing on Chinese EFL learners’ writing performance: an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study

While an increasing body of research has examined the role of digital multimodal composing (DMC) in L2 writing, existing studies have often focused on overall writing outcomes or learners’ perceptions, less is known about how DMC influences specific dimensions of writing performance and how learners experience these changes, particularly in Chinese EFL contexts. Accordingly, the present study adopts a mixed-methods approach to investigate the effects of DMC on multiple dimensions of writing performance and to explore learners’ perspectives on the composing process. The study involved 128 English-major undergraduates at a university in China who were assigned to an experimental group receiving DMC integrated writing instruction (n = 66) or a control group following traditional text-based instruction (n = 62) over an 18-week semester. Quantitative data were collected through pre- and post-test narrative writing tasks, while qualitative data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with 18 students in the experimental group. The results showed that students in the DMC group achieved significantly greater gains in overall writing performance than those in the control group, particularly in organization, accuracy, and fluency, whereas no significant improvement was observed for complexity and voice. Qualitative findings helped account for these patterns by showing that learners perceived DMC as supporting idea generation and elaboration, increasing attention to language accuracy, and facilitating more explicit planning and organization of content. Participants also reported opportunities for personal expression and lexical refinement, while gains in syntactic complexity remained limited. In addition, learners identified challenges related to technical skills and the demands of multimodal composition. By integrating evidence from writing outcomes and learner experiences, the study provides insight into how DMC may support EFL writing development and offers pedagogical implications for implementing multimodal composing in EFL contexts.